Guild Wars 2

I found static discharge works nicely with scrapper, taking scrapper explosives and tools with elixer s, rifle turret, toolkit and mortar. Works with both soldier and marauder amulet, depending on how safe you want to be.

At the very least, I had fun with it ^^

Dagins.5163:

Kageseigi.2150:

Ps. Unfortunately, the Thief shall never reach its fullest Ninja potential until we are given MOUNTS. After all, what good is a Ninja without the capability to joust in style???

You can mount some charr, but only available to asuras.

My charr engi is cool with this. But only if I get to hurl said asura thief at evildoers

I really want an asura thief backpack now.

I like air and rage for D/P, although that’s because I don’t like the haste trait in trickery due to having to give up TotC and bountiful theft. Fire and blood are good choices too, I use energy sometimes as well depending on how I feel that day. As long as you have air, the second sigil is pretty changeable tbh.

I had a good night roaming last night for the first time in a long while. I’m finding if I just ignore D/D ele’s and condi mesmers I can kill most other things, although this is in WvW, PvP is a completely different fish.

I don’t think thief will get much in the way of buffs, but I’ll still play it. Since my healing bomb engi build doesn’t really exist anymore, it’s the only class I enjoy.

I have stow weapons bound to one of the thumb buttons on my mouse, this helps quite a lot since I like the auto normally and I find pressing 1 repeatedly quite clunky in combat.

I get very annoyed with the reveal traits etc as while stealth is an easy defence for thief, reveal is just a brainless way to counter it. For example, when roaming with a ranger friend last night the necro and guard we fought stealth trapped me after we killed the necro a couple times. I was running S/P, my friend was playing melee ranger. GG.

That being said, I welcome the reveal skills provided we get some buffs to base survivability. I’m fine with being the glassy type that hides when pressured, but if hiding isn’t going to be an option anymore then we really need something done about that.

Scrapper? Did they do the Engi reveal? (out of the loop)

I’ll try as much as possible with thief, but failing that I have an engi with predator I really should learn to play better. Also levelling a ranger atm, better S/D and range to boot.

I’d really rather keep playing thief though, it depends how frustrating the DD dodge animations are on release.

Yup, confirmed lag on new dodges. As long as the dodges can lag I for one will not be using them.

legenduu.4372:

I have Syphilis

Get it checked.

Kocoff.7582:

Man I am so sad. I have to attend a wedding tonight…. Love is making me miss out that Staff

Somebody…. plis.. halp.

I’m working 10am sat til 4pm sun, I feel that. I have tonight tho, going to make the most of it ^^

The changes you list aren’t bad, particularly the shadows embrace as a minor. With the current condi burn meta it’s an essential trait imo.

That said, SA is probably the most complete line when compared to CS and Acro (mostly acro). I’d sooner see more options opened up in those trees before we start thinking about SA which is arguably strong enough as it is.

Black Box.9312:

Amante.8109:

Like most in this forum, I’m not concerned with “doing fine” in a single preordained role. GW2 is ostensibly designed around player choice; I’d rather have more than one option on how to play my Thief (e.g., the tank, support, and/or condi builds that every other profession has).

True, but being master of one role is better than being master of zero.

What you say is true, it’s better to have one job than none. But it’s still not an excuse for the lack of diversity after nearly 3 years of “play your own way”.

Last time I tested this, my friend hit me for 16k on backstab with a zerker signet build, I had a marauder ammy equipped. Given he was running D/P so he wasn’t stacking vuln, I could easily see a 19k backstab from a trapper build.

Yup, +1 this. Any other class can +1 if the player understands how to rotate, it’s not a thief only thing and we shouldn’t be balanced as though it was.

Maugetarr.6823:

I’m going to disagree with you on the CS part not being worth it (from an sPvP perspective). At my crit chance, when making the choice between SA and CS, SA is a moderate increase in utility (not bad, but not great for my playstyle) while CS represents a 25% increase in outgoing damage (total damage when weighing the likelihood of crits). I definitely agree that Acro is mediocre and contains a bunch of auto procs that may or may not help.

I played with CS for a while and the extra damage is very nice, although I feel like condi rips me apart if they can tank a hit then burst (Necros for example). Admittedly I roam WvW and duel more than I PvP, so for me SA has more benefits in those circumstances, but for +1’ing a fight on point you’re definitely not wrong.

I guess what’s bugging me is that CS only really offers more damage, acro is mostly passive as you say, and with DA/TR being almost mandatory SA is the only appealing choice if you don’t want to go full glass.

I might be limiting myself by playing S/P but it’s more fun than D/P imo. Like I say, a lot rides on how good this new spec is. I realise i’m preaching to the choir at this point :/

So I’ve been messing with S/P a lot in duels recently, and a few things have become abundantly clear:

1) Assuming you take DA and Trickery, SA is still the strongest choice for the third line even for S/P due to the condi clean and target drop. CS and Acro don’t offer enough damage, cleanse or general survivability to compete.
2) It’s actually possible to perma stealth with S/P and shortbow (running SA whilst out of combat), and in some duels I could wait out the stealth of a meta D/P player before bursting.

Considering thief is getting more and more boxed in to stealth to the point where stealthless weapons benefit more from stealth traits than the other lines, I really hope that whatever this elite specialisation is it breaks our dependancy on stealth and gives us some real defence. Our build variety is currently appalling, frankly.

Cool, thanks all for the input, and sorry for the possibly misleading title

I saw someone complaining about perma stealth mesmers in WvW and it seemed sensible to ask those who play the class rather than going off on one. By the sounds of things it’s nothing to worry about since a loss of damage is a fair trade off imo, you’re just getting the “perma stealth” qq thief normally gets.

Thanks again

Not flaming, simply a curious thief here.

Is it possible to make a PU mesmer that uses the new spec for an obscene amount of stealth, and still do good damage?

Just wondering how much I should give up on thief and just play mesmer, considering the amount of flak thieves catch for perma stealth etc.

Seabreeze.8437:

Dex.6139:

Seabreeze.8437:

If we were getting an elite spec reveal on Friday, wouldn’t there be some kind of teaser image or announcement?

Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t get a teaser image.

Yeah, I really hope we get the thief elite this weekend. The melee staff hype for me is real.

I can’t stand the wait anymore, not just for this, but for really any kind of HoT news. It’s been so slow going that I feel like we aren’t going to see the expansion until 2017 if we’re lucky.

It’s the thief elite reveal, stands to reason that we wouldn’t see it coming :P

But yeah, bored of waiting for HoT. Frankly they shouldn’t have announced it until they’d actually made some of it.

Edit: Just checked it out, they announced HoT in January. This is not how you build hype. THIS IS HOW YOU KILL ENTHUSIASM FOR YOUR PRODUCT.

Daendur.2357:

i found it really hard to be used, but maybe in a ranged build it works better, it’s pretty cool, but i’ve never been able to use

I mainly started using it as I didn’t want to sacrifice shortbow for pistol offhand for interrupts, it can fill a similar role to infiltrator’s signet, and it’s more generally useful than a venom since it doesn’t require me to drastically change my build to be worth using.

Scorpion wire, slight of hand and basilisk venom are enough interrupts to get 10+ torment stacks and 5-8 confusion stacks on someone, which is more than enough to finish someone if you force them to use up their cleanses on bleeds first. It’s also pretty fun to throw necros off cliffs by pulling then fearing them. Mainly it’s fun lol.

You may be right though, I’ve only really used it on ranged builds. For melee you’re generally better off with infiltrator’s signet if you don’t need the interrupt.

Staff, but only as long as there’s a shovel skin and it’s melee.

Sure, it’ll be redundant most likely, I just wanna sneak attack someone with a shovel.

Daendur.2357:

scorpion wire ?

Yup, it’s very effective given a lot of the condi burst comes from interrupt. You’ve got to be careful how you play it, but still.

Mefiq.7039:

Unless condi mesmer is rly bad, there is almost no way to win vs him in 1v1 as thief, even if u drop condis every 3 sec he just stacks like 3 condis every shatter not to mention his skills. You cant rly attack you cant rly move, torment was always insane vs thief but when u add it to Confusion it starts getting out of hand. Only trick i found is to focus on backstabs instead of pressure, bs invis bs invis bs invis till they drop rly low.

I’m finding condi thief is a good general counter to condi mes still tbh. They got a lot of condi removal in the new patch but as I understand it they still have to land shatters to remove condis which gives you an advantage.

Been playing this over the last day or so, even though it was thrown together in 30 mins it outperforms my power builds to such an extent I’m seriously considering rerolling my ascended armor and weapons to dire.

gin.7158:

messiah.1908:

here is short vid i did year ago step by step

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg_Z6E92M3o

In your video, you walk backward for a split second. Is it all about speed of pressing keys?
That’s actually my problem. I don’t want to walk backward nor stopping movement. I notice actually withdraw not a really speed boost. I think the covered distance is pretty similar with people walking with swiftness.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

I have about-face and withdraw bound to caps lock and q respectively, makes it easy for me to do it smoothly. The actual button combo is less important than simply practicing the manoeuvre though.

Try practicing withdrawing forwards into a cloak and dagger off a target in HotM, it’s a good way to get the combo and roll distance set in your mind.

Do you use free camera? If yes, how can you keep the camera still?

Yeah, I use free camera. I’ll drag the camera off centre a smidge using left click so it’s not bound to my char, use about-face>withdraw and during the withdraw animation I’ll hold right click again to refocus the camera in my direction of travel. It sounds complicated but once you get the muscle memory down it’s really simple to do.

There is a very slight delay on my method as well, the only way you’ll not turn for a split second is if you turn the camera using the mouse really. I also have a high sensitivity on my mouse so I can do either. If you dodge then withdraw, you’ll have time during the dodge to aim the camera without being a sitting duck.

I’d say cele D/D ele is a contender atm, they can down a thief in PvP with accidental AoE damage just by stacking might. The buff to confusion and PU did make mesmers slightly silly though.

I wouldn’t write off condi thief either, I just had a 2v1 fight in an enemy camp vs a diamond skin ele and condi mesmer. I killed the ele and they only got me after 2 stealth traps and a moa, pretty much because I got overconfident and kept fighting.

I have about-face and withdraw bound to caps lock and q respectively, makes it easy for me to do it smoothly. The actual button combo is less important than simply practicing the manoeuvre though.

Try practicing withdrawing forwards into a cloak and dagger off a target in HotM, it’s a good way to get the combo and roll distance set in your mind.

I like that pistol whip goes the full animation on cast tbh. Forces me to be careful not to spam it, which makes me better in the long run. You can use pistol whip defensively vs ranged attacks if you know when they’re coming too btw, like P/D condi. I agree it’s almost impossible vs melee tho, better to go for the stun to interrupt.

Other than those things, I agree with all of this. Don’t know why they messed with the sb 3 animation when they made that un-cancelable backstep a thing tbh, it was fine before. Especially now vigor’s took it like a man.

Problem is that a parry/riposte skill with no set cooldown would be very hard to balance with the S/D set as is.

Unless it cost a fair amount of ini, it would be OP in 1v1, but vs multiple opponents it would be nigh useless; where an evade would dodge attacks from any foe, riposte would by definition only block the first strike then lock you into the counter-attack animation so you would have to take the other hits. This would limit the set in much the same way as D/D is limited currently, where 1 and 2 are good, 3 fails defensively and 4 and 5 are shared with S/D.

On a melee staff with other defensive mechanics like another dodge skill and a projectile block, riposte would work and would likely be awesome. But it wouldn’t help S/D, imo it would likely do the opposite.

I’d choose based on what you’re fighting that game. Is the stolen item going to be useful? Lots of mesmers or thieves? Go improv. Necros, guardians and engis everywhere? Take executioner.

It also depends what’s on your team, if you’re co-ordinated with another dps class then improv is a better choice, if you’re playing with tanks take executioner imo.

Hope that helps :P

So, i’ve been messing with S/P a lot since the patch as honestly it feels better than S/D atm, although I now struggle with meta thieves due to the auto attack speed and blind. To be expected, but still.

A lot of people say that S/D needs a damage increase because it didn’t get the same power creep other classes got while it’s main defence got nerfed. Would a trait that increases the sword attack speed help solve both problems? I’m thinking like the engi trait for rifle, 10% for reference. I believe warrior has one for sword as well.

So what do people think? Good or bad idea? Not enough or too much?

I’d settle for just your proposed change to pain response tbh. That alone would make non-stealth builds so much more viable it’s not even funny. Been playing S/P a lot recently, I don’t expect to beat meta builds when played at an equal level but it would be nice to not pretty much auto lose to a condi bomb.

The main problem I can see is: how are you going to make it so these changes don’t just buff D/P too, and lead to more nerfs?

Shadow’s embrace no longer removes non damaging conditions like cripple, that’s why you’re hobbling. There’s centaur runes that halve the duration of cripple and that work fairly well with the bottom acro majors, or Lyssa runes if you don’t mind the drop in power and want more boons, but other than that withdraw is pretty much the only way to get rid of cripple now.

I’m actually kinda liking centaur for solo roaming atm, swapped to them from pack not long after the patch. I have 50% crit chance plus perma fury from crit strikes post patch, so the pack rune proc and extra precision seem a little redundant.

I also question the logic of relying on a proc that triggers when you’re hit when everyone’s burst just got crazy buffs. Centaur might be weaker offensively, but it’s still a power rune, it gives me perma swiftness in a controllable way, and it also works quite nicely with acro should you decide to run that. You also can’t argue with the price.

Vamp should work well though, if you can live with not having 100% swiftness uptime. It’s been a meta rune for PvP for a little while now and most thieves seem to run it. Best bet would be to play some PvP with it and see what you think. Scholar should also work, since you’re using SA you’re more likely to be on high health more of the time.

I have my headpiece, chest and legs as soldier with everything else zerker with centaur runes for just about every power build now. Gives me about 14.5-15k health and 2.3k armor without sacrificing power, which works for me.

Best thing to do is play around and see what you like to run, personal preference will get you further than sticking exactly to a meta imo.

Jesiah.2457:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

If you want power too, carrion is the way forward. It depends how durable you want to be, dire is better generally on a pure condi build and the extra toughness really makes a difference.

If you want power and some crit chance to work with critical strikes, consider some sinister gear. Direct damage would be akin to knight’s gear, you’d have condi instead of toughness which means more bleed damage but no better defence than a zerker build has.

Scavenger runes are good with high vitality, plex and krait work well too (plex more for WvW).

Frankly though, hybrid builds don’t work amazingly on thief, you’re generally better off going full zerk or dire and doing either condi or direct damage, not both. P/D cele may be an exception, but since you don’t wanna change weapons or trinkets you’re really limiting your options.

I would like to say that before this patch, I ran a hybrid thief and it was incredibly successful for me personally. After patch though, I agree with your statement, hybrid thief is a thing of the past / worthless.

You either go full investment, or you go home. You’re going to need x amount of power to get through the initial defense of something like say an elementalist running diamond armor, and of course x condition damage so that you actually have pressure because compared to what other classes can do with burning alone you are going to need it.

IMO, Condi thief needs a little bit of love. >.<

You’re quite right, that’s kinda what I meant about cele being an exception. I didn’t know whether it was still a thing tbh. Thanks for making it clearer ^^

If you want power too, carrion is the way forward. It depends how durable you want to be, dire is better generally on a pure condi build and the extra toughness really makes a difference.

If you want power and some crit chance to work with critical strikes, consider some sinister gear. Direct damage would be akin to knight’s gear, you’d have condi instead of toughness which means more bleed damage but no better defence than a zerker build has.

Scavenger runes are good with high vitality, plex and krait work well too (plex more for WvW).

Frankly though, hybrid builds don’t work amazingly on thief, you’re generally better off going full zerk or dire and doing either condi or direct damage, not both. P/D cele may be an exception, but since you don’t wanna change weapons or trinkets you’re really limiting your options.

A remove condition on a successful dodge would be interesting. Just on dodge might be too much.

Jesiah.2457:

DT even combined with Potent Poisons & a runeset focused on enhancing poison duration isn’t even worth it for thieves.

If you want to stack poison, go with leeching venoms / venomous aura, you don’t need Dagger Training and you certainly don’t need Potent Poisons either, the damage buff and duration is completely negligible. They are both utter jokes, end of story.

Seriously … I mean if you try them, have fun feeling even less effective especially when compared to your now god-tier burst thief counterparts. 11k backstabs in spvp not even WvW! 6k Heartseekers, I don’t really need to say anything more.

Edit: Also, because “Arenanet” as reasons, screw ricochet giving the already mocked and laughed at pistol thieves even more of a reason to be laughed at and mocked. Anet obviously doesn’t care about thieves and whoever is in charge of thief traits doesn’t understand condi thieves beyond the core mechanic of “burst works, lets focus on this and nothing else because I’m literally too ignorant to focus on anything else and hope it’s decent.”

Seriously, mad props to how fail Anet is.

A guildie and myself tested max backstabs on each other in PvP, he hit me for 16k with backstab and 3.4k with mug using 66006 D/P on a signet build with revealed training, scholar runes etc.

With damage like that, poison is really not worth a lot unless you’re fighting a sponge.

Drennon.7190:

Penguin.5197:

The counterplay to stealth has always been swing wildly in the air and hope you hit something, except that now with this trait doing that is actually rewarded.

Its not like you are auto revealed within a certain distance or anything. There is play on both sides, the engineer has to estimate where the thief could be and the thief has to evade those attacks while getting in poistion to do whatever he needs.

If the engineer watches a thief go into shadow refuge and cant figure out where they are, that player needs an icepick lobotomy.

This made me laugh, if only because how right he is.

I’m fully gonna run lock on all the time because I’ve never much liked speedy kits and now it’s merged with a trait with an awkward effect it’s less appealing to me again. Since I’m already taking inventions for bunker down, the 25% trait will do for me. I’m probably not the only engi player thinking this either.

Dirame.8521:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Explosives is great for grenades and bombs, as you say. It’s maybe not as good for other builds, but considering the lines are now called SPECIALISATIONS, wanting each one to benefit each build equally is actually a bit silly.

Of course the explosives specialisation won’t help you as much as other options if you don’t use explosives. That’s pretty obvious.

Good point. But my thought is still that even if you ran grenades, you could still run any other line because they could offer you way more. I mean yea you’ve got Shrapnel but, Firearms has Incendiary Powder, Explosives has vuln on explosions but Firearms has vuln on crit.

I just feel the usefulness of the other lines far out-shine the Explosives line.

That’s fair enough, you have a point there. I still think grenades will be far better with explosives if only for the projectile speed, and I plan on taking explosives if only for the blast on dodge. That with bombs and healing turret will be amazing.

That being said, I’ve often thought that the grenades are mostly good because of the way they interact with traits like the vuln minor in explosives (which makes rifle and toolkit better by extension) and their 1500 range. This makes the changes to mortar and grenade kit interesting to me as I’m wondering whether you can do well with the bomb kit (with reduced fuse time) and mortar kit as a replacement to grenades.

I don’t actually think nades will drop out the meta incidentally, as with explosives grenades are going to be excellent. I do think that with inventions and tools set to be staples for engi (at least for me they will be), explosives is still the best line for a power build, especially with grenades. It’ll just be interesting to see how reliant power based grenades builds are on things like the vuln trait when you don’t have to take that specialisation just for grenades to be worth taking.

Explosives is great for grenades and bombs, as you say. It’s maybe not as good for other builds, but considering the lines are now called SPECIALISATIONS, wanting each one to benefit each build equally is actually a bit silly.

Of course the explosives specialisation won’t help you as much as other options if you don’t use explosives. That’s pretty obvious.

For me, a lot hinges on how good mortar kit turns out to be. If we can use that as a ranged option instead of nades we could take bombs with hoelbrak runes and battle/intelligence sigils and use the fire field to generate might to offset the power loss and the condi changes at the same time. At least for PvP anyway.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

My point is that if a certain build has all the tools available to counter the mechanics of another, it’s a counter to that build. Condi engi vs thief fits that imo, but that may be subjective.

My point is, that is not necessarily true. Using the Engi as an example, just because he refuses to die doesn’t necessarily means his build is a counter to Thief only because the Thief can choose not to attack and the Engi does nothing.

At least we agree on medi guard :P

Yes, we do. Medi Guard has the ability to put Thief in the defensive that even if the Thief choose not to attack, the Guard will just beat on their face. Engi is too sluggish to do that to a Thief.

Yeah, that’s a fair point about the engi, although I’d still say it’s one of the harder matchups for thief at least. Fair play.

There’s still a problem in your logic though: killing a thief isn’t a hard counter. I’ve killed 2 rangers 2v1 on a plex apothecary engi, but I wouldn’t by any stretch say that my build hard counters rangers, or even that my build was any more than a failed experiment in trolling. All it really shows is that I know how to LoS and they were dumb enough to stand in my bombs and kept attacking with 15 stacks of confusion on them (I kinda see your point with condi engi now i’ve written that, fair enough).

When we talk about counters, we’re talking about all party involves are competent. Your example is invalid since you use incompetent players to support your point.

I think you dismissed my point out of hand, and missed what I was saying here. Just because I kill a thief once doesn’t make my build a counter to thief, it just means I outplayed them at that time. My point is if you need to get the same results reliably before you can say it’s a counter.

What I think you mean that if a build RELIABLY forces another to run or die, it’s a counter. Which is pretty much what I said in my first post.

No, that’s not what I mean at all. When someone runs from you, how do you then know that you countered them and not that they got bored and need to take a nap?

The only reliable evidence that you have successfully countered them is when you stab their dead corpse with a banner of victory — otherwise, it’s wishful thinking.

Tldr: the thief ran, big whoop. Doesn’t change whether your build is a counter to theirs or not, it only means the thief realised how much you counter them.

Keep on believing that while the reality is that you’re boring.

The Thief can’t kill you, you can’t kill the Thief = boring, waste of time.

Whether I’m boring or not is ad hominem and is irrelevant to the argument. If I just manage to run away from a medi guard, it doesn’t change the fact the medi guard just handed my kitten to me on a plate.

My point is simply that just because thief is one of the only classes that CAN run from a bad encounter, doesn’t mean you counter him any less if you have to fight. Since the entire idea of a counter assumes that you have to fight in the first place, deciding that something counters you less because you can simply run away makes absolutely no sense, which is what some earlier posters were saying.

I don’t know how I can say it any clearer than that, so we may have to agree to disagree.

Toxsa.2701:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Just putting this out there, but any build where the standard advice for fighting it is ‘run’, is generally seen as a counter. The fact we as thieves are very good at running is actually irrelevant: if we have minimal chances of winning against build X, and are forced to run or die, it’s a counter. If you failed to catch us when we were on the ropes then that’s your problem.

That being said, a competent medi guard or condi engi will likely counter a thief with little problems, due to the large amount of sustain, CC and hard to avoid damage available to both builds.

Yeah, it’s our problem for letting you get away because stealth and shadowstep have so little counter-play. That’s why I play pew pew ranger with sic-em when I see thief in WvW :P Then those angry thieves start posting nerf threads about ranger because they sometimes do die to them because there’s actually a counter-play to all their advantages. Guess thieves do not allow their mechanic to have any counter-plays

You just complained about thief mechanics having little counter-play, then described exactly how you personally go about counter-playing a thief in the very next sentence. Working as intended imo, and still more counter-play than invuln. (I’m tired, forgive me if my sarcasm detector is faulty tonight).

And yes. When there is counter-play to a mechanic, it is always the opposing player’s fault if they fail to use it, regardless of class or situation. If you correctly counter-play a mechanic and get the kill, you deserve it. In your case, that’s why I normally run daggerstorm when I roam solo. kitten you rangers :P

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Just putting this out there, but any build where the standard advice for fighting it is ‘run’, is generally seen as a counter. The fact we as thieves are very good at running is actually irrelevant: if we have minimal chances of winning against build X, and are forced to run or die, it’s a counter. If you failed to catch us when we were on the ropes then that’s your problem.

That being said, a competent medi guard or condi engi will likely counter a thief with little problems, due to the large amount of sustain, CC and hard to avoid damage available to both builds.

Letting a Thief run away is not a hard counter.

Bunkering is not a hard counter.

Refusing to die is never a hard counter.

I’m not saying any of these things. Quite the opposite in fact, I agree that they’re all irrelevant to whether something is a counter.

Therefore, a condi Engi is never a hard counter; it doesn’t matter how competent the Engi is, they will only kill an incompetent Thief.

Killing a Thief IS a hard counter and only Medi Guard can successfully do this based on my experience.

My point is that if a certain build has all the tools available to counter the mechanics of another, it’s a counter to that build. Condi engi vs thief fits that imo, but that may be subjective. At least we agree on medi guard :P

There’s still a problem in your logic though: killing a thief isn’t a hard counter. I’ve killed 2 rangers 2v1 on a plex apothecary engi, but I wouldn’t by any stretch say that my build hard counters rangers, or even that my build was any more than a failed experiment in trolling. All it really shows is that I know how to LoS and they were dumb enough to stand in my bombs and kept attacking with 15 stacks of confusion on them (I kinda see your point with condi engi now i’ve written that, fair enough). What I think you mean that if a build RELIABLY forces another to run or die, it’s a counter. Which is pretty much what I said in my first post.

Tldr: the thief ran, big whoop. Doesn’t change whether your build is a counter to theirs or not, it only means the thief realised how much you counter them.

Just putting this out there, but any build where the standard advice for fighting it is ‘run’, is generally seen as a counter. The fact we as thieves are very good at running is actually irrelevant: if we have minimal chances of winning against build X, and are forced to run or die, it’s a counter. If you failed to catch us when we were on the ropes then that’s your problem.

That being said, a competent medi guard or condi engi will likely counter a thief with little problems, due to the large amount of sustain, CC and hard to avoid damage available to both builds.

AikijinX.6258:

Jrunyon.3012:

As someone who would love to run this but due to the stated problems will not, I wholeheartedly agree.

Thank you for hearing me out, and Feedback.
-I really actually feel like the trap would be perfect if it had a 3/4 cast time. But a guy can dream.. And on gw2 wiki, it states the cast time is 1/2 not 1 1/2. Honestly I just miss the old OP shadow trap. :p

Jugglemonkey.8741:

I love this trap, as it can get you out of a serious bind when played right. My main gripe is that it’s unreliable unless you plan to port along a road or a location you’ve already tested and proven to work. That’s more of a shadowstep issue in general though.

Yeah I agree sometimes just 1 hair to the left or 1 small incline or decline is enough to throw it off. But I still run it to this day, because it saved me more than its killed me 1, and 2 when fighting other thieves with refuge this trap can provide for some good counter play.You can’t rely on shadow refuge to get you out of all situations. And if you know how to use it, shadow trap has the ability to counter a refuge users (sometimes) It’s done simply by placing the trap inside the refuge, waiting about 2-3 seconds (Shave off some refuge time) then trigger shadow pursuit to disappear, and then you’ll be behind the back of your foe, (stealth or not). I feel as though if thieves don’t rely on refuge, and SA trait line, it’ll challenge their skill, and in time increase their skill level. (My opinion)

I still run it sometimes, like when my guild trebs hills from the wall outside the bottom right camp, I leave the trap on the wall so I can port up from the tunnel by the tower or just outside the camp. I’d love it to be more reliable tho, the other changes you suggest would be icing on the cake.

Where is that location you are talking about ?0_o I really only am in Eternal Battlegrounds

Ah, sorry, I only really play in the borders so I forget EB exists sometimes ^^ Any border, water camp (south east) below hills, there’s a wall along the entrance to it. Walking along the wall away from the ramp up to it, you’ll see a ridge about 2/3 of the way along. As long as the trap is set in that third of the wall furthest from the ramp up, you can port there from the bridge to hills, the tunnel entrance by the tower, and from just outside the camp (watch for LoS with the hill from the water on that last one). It’s funny, you only used to be able to port on the other side of the door, but since the shadowstep changes you can now only port on the side I described.

I agree with your comments with learning to play without refuge and SA, I did exactly that when I swapped to S/D over a year ago and my play improved dramatically. I ran shadowstep, blinding powder and shadow trap for a long time, the juking potential is ridiculous ^^

I do think that shadow trap should have a fairly lengthy cast time, given how strong the effect can be. I tend to deliberately place it somewhere it won’t be triggered when roaming though, so a CnD>shadow trap is an effective disengage without burning refuge or shadowstep. The cast time is much more of a bind in a dire situation, but other ports don’t break the animation, so it’s pretty funny to use steal and shadowstep combos when it’s casting and go all nightcrawler on someone.

The 120s timer on that can be a pain, but out of combat (and kitten after you placed the trap) you can swap the utility then reselect shadow trap to reset the skill and place it again. Having that kitten internal cooldown for swapping utilities but not for destruction is a bit harsh, but I expect they would nerf the boons granted if you could double trigger like that (20 stacks might from double trigger, yes please).

But yeah, if they fixed the kitten ports, I’d be a much happier thief. The rest of what you propose would be nice, but I’d sooner have a strong but reliable skill than a potentially OP skill that may or may not save my kitten depending on whether I feel lucky that day.

Edit: On re-reading your OP, I agree with the change you suggest to not waste the trap if the port fails. The only problem I can see with that is the cast time, even if you could cast it, you could LoS behind grass while it casts.

I love this trap, as it can get you out of a serious bind when played right. My main gripe is that it’s unreliable unless you plan to port along a road or a location you’ve already tested and proven to work. That’s more of a shadowstep issue in general though.

I still run it sometimes, like when my guild trebs hills from the wall outside the bottom right camp, I leave the trap on the wall so I can port up from the tunnel by the tower or just outside the camp. I’d love it to be more reliable tho, the other changes you suggest would be icing on the cake.

Nice video ^^ I ran into Wavin Thief a few days ago, seems your whole guild is a chill as he is. Keep it up ^^

I have 3 daggers, 3 pistols, 2 shortbows and a sword atm. One zerk D/D set, an assassin S/D set, a dire P/D set and 2 pistols (one zerk one assassin) in case I feel like playing S/P, D/P or P/P.

The power pistols and bow are ascended, as is my power based armor set. Dire imo doesn’t need the extra stats, I have 2.1k condi, nearly 3k armor and 20k health with plain exotic which makes you pretty hard to kill as is. Power builds on the other hand lack defence generally, so it’s worth getting ascended for that. Given you’ll only ever use zerk on a power build 90% of the time, legendaries are only really worth it for the skins as things stand. As Vincent said though, the flexibility is very nice when the meta is sure to change with the expansion.

I hope that helps somewhat ^^